What is the Best Way to Start a Meeting?

What is the most important thing to do at the start of a meeting? Go over ground rules? …Boring! Introduce everyone to each other? Important, but probably not first. Review the agenda? Probably the MOST common error!

So what IS the most effective way to start meetings? Consider this – at the beginning of a meeting, people typically want to know two things.

Why am I here?

Why should I care?

So to really engage your participants, and set your meeting up for success, put yourself in their place and be sure to answer those two questions before facilitating the rest of the meeting. To help ensure that the two questions are answered well, Leadership Strategies uses the abbreviations I.E.E.I. as a reminder of the things to include in your opening to start a meeting. Learn additional leadership tips from our experts by registering for our webinars.

Inform – Excite – Empower – Involve

Inform – Let the participants know the purpose of the meeting and the product to be produced.

Excite – Explain the benefits of the meeting and why this meeting should be important to them.

Empower – Describe the role they will play or the authority that has been given to them.

Involve – Get them involved immediately through an engagement question that furthers the meeting purpose.

Unfortunately, meeting leaders often start meetings by reviewing the agenda (here’s your agenda guide) and diving straight into the first agenda item. As a result, participants often aren’t sure of the purpose of the meeting, the products to be produced, why the meeting is beneficial, or why the meeting should be important to them. In essence, meetings often begin with an ineffective start that can negatively affect the rest of the meeting.

The start can take as little as five minutes and as long as forty-five minutes or more depending on the size of the group, the length of the meeting, and the steps you use. You should adjust the list as appropriate for the meetings you lead.

To help you with your opening, we’re going to dig a little deeper into the parts of IEEI.

Inform

“The purpose of this meeting is…When we are done, we will walk away with…”

What a great way to start a meeting! These words inform everyone of why we are here (purpose) and what we will have when we are done (product). These words help get everyone on the same page.

Excite

The excite segment is the part of IEEI that is most often overlooked by meeting leaders. The excite segment answers the question, “Why should I care?” Without the excite, you may have people in the room, but are they really at the table?

How do you excite? You excite by making statements that answer the question for them, “What’s in it for me?” Compare these two sample openings. Which one does the better job of exciting?

Excite Sample I

Good morning, it’s a pleasure to be here this morning.

Let me start by reviewing why we are here.

The purpose of this meeting is to fix our hiring process. When we are done we will have three things: a diagram that shows how the new hiring process will work, a list of benefits of the new process, and a step-by-step plan for getting this new process implemented.

What is exciting about this? If we are successful, we will walk away with a new hiring process that will help our organization get the right people hired and get them hired quickly.

Excite Sample II

Good morning, it’s a pleasure to be here this morning.

Let me start by reviewing why we are here.

The purpose of this meeting is to fix our hiring process. When we are done we will have three things: a diagram that shows how the new hiring process will work, a list of benefits of the new process, and a step-by-step plan for getting this new process implemented.

What is exciting about this? Today you may have people on your staff who don’t have the skills or the attitude you need. As a result, you are having to work much harder to make up for what they aren’t doing. This is your opportunity to put strategies in place to ensure that you get the people you need to get the work done.

The second sample is by far the better excite statement. It does a better job of describing the benefits to the person. But did you notice one other thing? Count the number of times the words “you” or “your” show up in the excite statements.

A key secret to getting people excited about participating in a meeting is to explain what is in it for them. And you can help ensure you do this well by including the words “you” or “your” at least four times in the excite portion of the IEEI.

Empower

The goal in empowering participants is to ensure that they are clear on the power they have while in the meeting. When people feel empowered, they tend to be less hesitant to participate in discussion and more willing to offer their thoughts and ideas.

Below are three samples of empowering. Often a single, focused, empowering statement is adequate. Other times you may find that multiple statements are needed to empower a group that is used to being told what to do.

Empower Examples

You all were hand-picked by your managers to serve on this hiring process task force because they felt you had the understanding of what is needed and the vision to create something much better than we currently have.

The organization is looking to each of you to bring the ideas and the focus that will create a much better higher process.

While we are not the final decision makers, the Leadership Team is looking to this team to create a recommendation with the justification needed to bring our hiring process to the next level and beyond.

Involve

After delivering the opening, consider getting the participants immediately involved. Why? The involvement step engages everyone quickly and prepares them for the rest of the meeting.

How do you involve participants early in a meeting? For some teams, it is best to start with a question that is focused on the task at hand. For other teams, it may be more appropriate to start with a question that takes more of a people-focus. Consider the following samples:

Involve Examples

Key Topics Approach

Think about the meeting purpose.

If we are going to accomplish this purpose, there are probably specific topics that you know we need to cover, specific issues that we have to address, or maybe specific ideas that we should discuss.

Let’s build the list. If we are going to be successful today, what topics do we need to talk about?

Personal Outcomes Approach

Let’s assume this meeting was highly successful.

Think about the things that resulted, the outcomes that occurred, and the things that would make you say, “This was a great meeting.”

Let’s build the list. Given our purpose and products, what are the outcomes you personally would like to see come out of today’s meeting?

One-minute Check-in Approach

It has been several days since we were all together. Let’s start with each person giving a quick one-minute check-in.

We were last together on [date]. Since that time, there probably have been one or more significant events that have occurred in your personal or professional life.

Consider the major events that have occurred and pick one that was significant for you. Let’s go around the room. What is a significant event that has happened to you since we were last together?

Using the IEEI approach will help you facilitate highly effective meetings with openings that inform, excite, empower and involve. If you are looking for more facilitation training, contact Leadership Strategies today.

27 Comments

This info is very good,I really enjoyed all you have to give us. Thank you! Great work. It will help me prepare a much better meeting for my group.

07:58 am

Phellip Jay

this is a good info… NOW I CAN START MEETING WITH MY MARCHING BAND :D….

THANK YOU!

04:21 am

zaheer

constructive…really enjoyed

05:06 am

Faisal

Brilliant

01:21 pm

Asfaw Begna

It’s interesting ideas and facts

06:35 pm

Shellee

Thank you… !!! I’m new at facilitating meetings, this will be very helpful.

09:25 am

Debra

Great Information!

03:59 am

MARY LOUW

THIS IS INCREDIBLE. I HAVE A MEETING TODAY AND NOW I KNOW HOW TO BE GREAT LEADER TODAY ON THIS MEETING. THANKS SO MUCH

08:50 am

Cristian Buanga

great help. thanks

06:33 am

Andrew Sibanda

I like the presentation. It empowers a lot

03:09 pm

Jamil

Good Idea. Thank YOU

09:44 am

anjalee

it was really useful,thank u

10:45 am

carina

THIS IS AWESOME!!! GREAT INFORMATION IS GIVEN…..

08:53 am

Santosh

Really this information helps a lot.

08:04 am

Rachel

very informative, would like more ideas

02:37 pm

Colleen

Fantastic article!! Just what i needed to plan my meeting. Thank you

08:43 pm

Anton

brilliant…i’m going to used this great ideas

06:03 pm

Rodney

Awesome write-up and just what I needed to kick-off my next Customer meeting with senior executives, thanks for sharing it!

03:36 pm

jai

Hi, the content is very nicely placed and is very clear how to professionally start the meeting. Thank You for this article.

01:03 am

John Elmer Tan

VERY HELPFUL!

09:11 am

Cha

Great blog! This will definitely help with my meeting tomorrow!

08:57 pm

Richardruiff

Leadership can be pathologically destructive or intensely inspirational. But what is it about the leaders themselves that causes them to be one or the other? I believe the answer lies in the degree of narcissism in the personality of the leader in question.